The Navy is in the process ofresearching and defining require-ments for a shipboard anti-ship mis-sile. Competition will factor into anyacquisition strategy to ensure that therequirement is fulfilled at the bestvalue to the government, Myers saidThe new frigate will be given anover-the-horizon anti-ship missile,but that effort is “a separate effortfrom finding a replacement weaponfor Harpoon on [cruisers and de-stroyers],” he said. “Frigate require-ments are currently in staffing.”“The Navy is pursuing full andopen competition for an over-the-horizon capability for the frigate,”said Dale Eng, spokesman for Pro-gram Executive Office-LCS and Pro-gram Executive Office-IntegratedWarfare Systems. “It is not in competition yet.”Boeing sees the Harpoon as a solution for theLCS/new frigate.

“Harpoon is the answer for LCS and the Navy’s dis-tributed lethality construct,” said Tim Kelsheimer,Boeing’s Harpoon program manager. “Harpoon is an all-weather, highly effective missile that is combat-provenagainst the current threats. … Harpoon improvementsbuild upon this proven capability by providing extendedrange, enhanced target selectivity and improved effec-tiveness through avionics upgrades, guidance enhance-ments and updated subsystems.”Kelsheimer said “these improvements can be retrofittedinto existing inventory weapons as well as new builds forLCS and any current Harpoon shooter. Block II+ Harpoonis transitioning to production for the Navy. Surface warfarewill soon be able to take advantage of the NEW capabilitythat Block II+ will bring. Leveraging the NEW will be adecisive advantage to the warfighter and will bring a sig-nificant enhancement to the distributed lethality concept.”Another possible contender for the new frigate isthe Naval Strike Missile built by Kongsberg, withwhich Raytheon is teamed for marketing.

“The USS Coronado [LCS 4] successfully performeda live-fire demonstration of a Kongsberg Naval StrikeMissile [NSM] during missile testing operations off thecoast of Southern California, Sept. 23, 2014,” Eng said.“During the test, the NSM was launched from the deckof Coronado and scored a direct hit on its intended tar-get, a Mobile Ship Target. The missile test was assessedas successful and identified as a possible futurewarfighting capability for the LCS program.”“The NSM fully supports the U.S. Navy’s distributedlethality strategy to increase offensive anti-surface mis-sion capability,” said Ron Jenkins, business developmentdirector for Raytheon Missile Systems. “Raytheon andKongsberg believe NSM is the ideal over-the-horizonanti-surface warfare weapon system for existing LCSs,the new frigate and additional L-class ships, becauseNSM is the only fifth-generation weapon system fullydeveloped in production and ready now with low-costand low-risk integration options. The missile was specif-ically designed to penetrate advanced air- and missile-defense systems with unique features to defeat shipclose in defense systems.”The Navy has determined that the new precision-guided long-range anti-ship missile to counter threatsin the future will need to be able to operate in a GPS-denied environment.

It completed an Over-the-Horizon Anti-Surface
Warfare (OASuW) analysis of alternatives in 2011. The
Navy selected the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile
(LRASM) as Increment 1 of the OASuW initiative. The
AGM-158C LRASM is a derivative of the Air Force’s
AGM-158B Joint Air-to-Surface Missile-Extended Range.

“The LRASM program has been a Navy program
since early 2014 and has been fully funded by the Navy
since then,” Myers said.

“Offensive Anti-Surface Warfare Increment 1 includes
only the rapid fielding of an air-launched version of
LRASM [AGM-158C] and early operational capability
fielding on the U.S. Air Force’s B-1B and the U.S. Navy’s
F/A-18E/F aircraft,” Engdahl said. “Surface-launched
capability is not planned as part of OASu W Increment 1.”

“Lockheed Martin is currently executing the accelerated acquisition contract for DARPA to provide an early
operational capability of LRASM onto the B-1B and the
F/A- 18 E/F in 2018 and 2019, respectively,” said Scott

The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Fitzgerald fires a
Harpoon missile during a live-fire drill Aug. 12 near Guam. The Harpoon has
been the Navy’s primary anti-ship cruise missile since 1977. The missiles are
being improved to counter the increasing technological sophistication and
expanded operational daring of potential adversaries.